Friday, October 24, 2014

Pope: no to death penalty and to inhuman prison conditions

(Vatican
Radio) Pope Francis on Thursday called on all men and women of good
will to fight for the abolishment of the death penalty in “all of its
forms” and for the improvement of prison conditions.

The Pope was addressing a group of members of the International Association of Criminal Law whom he received in the Vatican.

In his discourse the Pope also addressed the need to combat the phenomena of human trafficking and of corruption.

And he stressed that the fact that the enforcement of legal penalties must always respect human dignity.

In a dense and impassioned discourse
to the Jurists assembled in the Vatican for a private audience, Pope
Francis said that the “life sentence” is really a “concealed death
sentence”, and that is why – he explained – he had it annulled in the
Vatican Penal Code.

Many of the off-the-cuff comments
during the Pope’s speech shone the light on how politics and media all
too often act as triggers enflaming “violence and private and public
acts of vengeance” that are always in search of a scape-goat.

Recalling the words of Saint John
Paul II who condemned the death penalty as does the Catechism, Francis
decried the practice and denounced “so-called extrajudicial or
extralegal executions” calling them “deliberate homicides” committed by
public officials behind the screen of the Law:

“All Christians and people of
goodwill are called today to fight not only for the abolition of the
death penalty be it legal or illegal, in all of its forms, but also for
the improvement of prison conditions in the respect of the human dignity
of those who have been deprived of freedom. I link this to the death
sentence. In the Penal Code of the Vatican, the sanction of life
sentence is no more. A life sentence is a death sentence which is
concealed”.

And Pope Francis had words of harsh
criticism for all forms of criminality which undermine human dignity,
there are forms of his – he said - even within the criminal law system
which too often does not respect that dignity when criminal law is
applied.

“In the last decades” – the Pope said
– “there has been a growing conviction that through public punishment
it is possible to solve different and disparate social problems, as if
for different diseases one could prescribe the same medicine.”

He said this conviction has pushed
the criminal law system beyond its sanctioning boundaries, and into the
“realm of freedom and the rights of persons” without real effectiveness.

"There is the risk of losing sight
of the proportionality of penalties that historically reflect the scale
of values upheld by the State. The very conception of criminal law and
the enforcement of sanctions as an ‘ultima ratio’ in the cases of
serious offenses against individual and collective interests have
weakened. As has the debate regarding the use of alternative penal
sanctions to be used instead of imprisonment”.

Pope Francis speaks of remand or
detention of a suspect as a “contemporary form of illicit hidden
punishment” concealed by a “patina of legality”, as it enforces “an
anticipation of punishment” upon a suspect who has not been convicted.
From this – the Pope points out – derives the risk of multiplying the
number of detainees still awaiting trial, who are thus convicted without
benefiting from the protective rules of a trial. In some countries – he
says – this happens in some 50% of all cases with the trickledown
effect of terribly overcrowded detention centers:

“The deplorable conditions of
detention that take place in different parts of the world are an
authentic inhuman and degrading trait, often caused by deficiencies of
criminal law, or by a lack of infrastructures and good planning. In many
cases they are the result of an arbitrary and merciless exercise of
power over persons who have been deprived of freedom.”

Pope Francis also speaks of what he
calls “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments and sanctions,” and
compares detention in maximum-security prisons to a “form of torture”.
The isolation imposed in these places – he says – causes “mental and
physical” suffering that result in an “increased tendency towards
suicide”. Torture – the Pope points out – is used not only as a means to
obtain “confession or information”:

“It is an authentic ‘surplus’ of
pain that is added to the woes of detention. In this way torture is used
not only in illegal centers of detention or in modern concentration
camps, but also in prisons, in rehabilitation centers for minors, in
psychiatric hospitals, in police stations and in other institutions for
detention or punishment”.

And Pope Francis said children must
be spared the harshness of imprisonment – as must, at least in a limited
way – older people, sick people, pregnant women, disabled people as
well as parents if they are the sole guardians of minors or persons with
disabilities.

The Pope also highlighted one of the
criminal phenomena he has always spoken out against vehemently: human
trafficking which - he says – is the result of that “cycle of dire
poverty” that traps “a billion people” and forces at least 45 million to
flee from conflict:

“Based on the fact that it is
impossible to commit such a complex crime as is the trafficking of
persons without the complicity, be it active or of omission of action of
the State, it is evident that, when the efforts to prevent and combat
this phenomenon are not sufficient, we find ourselves before a crime
against humanity. This is even truer if those who are responsible for
the protection of persons and the safeguard of their freedom become an
accomplice of those who trade in human beings; in those cases the State
is responsible before its citizens and before the international
community”.

Pope Francis dedicates an ample part
of his discourse to corruption. The corrupt person – according to the
Pope – is a person who takes the “short-cuts of opportunism” that lead
him to think of himself as a “winner” who insults and persecutes whoever
contradicts him. “Corruption” – the Pope says “is a greater evil than
sin”, and more than “be forgiven, must be cured”.

“The criminal sanction is
selective. It is like a net that captures only the small fish leaving
the big fish to swim free in the ocean. The forms of corruption that
must be persecuted with greatest severity are those that cause grave
social damage, both in economic and social questions – for example grave
fraud against public administration or the dishonest use of
administration”.

Concluding, Pope Francis exhorted the
jurists to use the criteria of “cautiousness” in the enforcement of
criminal sanctions. This – he affirmed – must be the principle that
upholds criminal law:

“The respect for human dignity must
operate not only to limit the arbitrariness and the excesses of State
officials, but as a criteria of orientation for the persecution and the
repression of those behaviors that represent grave attacks against the
dignity and the integrity of the human person”.

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